Steve Israel: Family's pain lingers long after victim's death

He was the big brother whose pitches little brother Ken caught when they played catch.

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By Steve Israel

recordonline.com

By Steve Israel

Posted Feb. 21, 2014 at 2:00 AM

By Steve Israel
Posted Feb. 21, 2014 at 2:00 AM

» Social News

He was the big brother whose pitches little brother Ken caught when they played catch.

He was the big brother who was the best man at Ken's wedding.

And Mike Sherman was the big brother who said he would move next door to Ken when they both had families.

Then, on January 22, 1977, when Mike was a dentist and a captain in the Air Force, he and his wife Charlotte were driving from a base in Texas to one in California when they stopped to see the Grand Canyon.

They pulled over at a scenic overlook. They were shot and killed.

Mike and Charlotte Sherman were both 27 years old.

No one ever found out who did it.

"My parents went to their graves knowing that justice was never served in their son's death," Bloomingburg's Ken Sherman says. "I get sick to my stomach every time I think about what my brother was thinking when all this happened. I can't imagine what he and Charlotte went through."

Thirty-seven years later, Ken Sherman, a former principal and teacher in mid-Hudson schools, shares that sad story for a reason: "When someone dies in a crime or an accident or in something like the World Trade Center on 9/11, there is a much greater cost than just the victims," he says. "Each victim has many loved ones: mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, children, aunts, uncles "» the number of lives affected is many times more than the number of victims. Their lives are often destroyed and they never recover."

This is why Ken Sherman hates the term "closure."

"Even if they found my brother's killer, it wouldn't bring him back," he says. "There will never be closure for me or my sister."

Think about it.

We devour news about Laura Garza, who was smothered to death by Orange County's Michael Mele. We shake our heads, cry, maybe pray for Laura and her family. We move on.

But her family?

"Today this case is closed," Laura's brother Nicolas said after Mele pleaded guilty to manslaughter in March 2012 and was sentenced to 23 years in prison. "For us, there is no time we're going to be comfortable with it. It could be one hundred years and we're not going to be happy."

We write and read about our friends and neighbors who were killed on Sept. 11. We honor them. We cry for them. We comfort their families. We move on.

Yet an Orange County mother can't bear to remove the stuffed animals from her dead daughter's room. Her father remains stricken with grief.

We may not think of these victims or their families. Ken Sherman does.

He thinks of his big brother — only two years older than him — with whom he played catch. He thinks of his big brother who never got to move next door.

And on the first Thanksgiving after Mike Sherman died — a holiday Ken Sherman never had thought about — Ken Sherman thought of his big brother when he looked at his empty chair. And he thinks of big brother Mike every Thanksgiving since.